Entwicklung eines iterativen 3D Rekonstruktionverfahrens für die Kontrolle der Tumorbehandlung mit Schwerionen mittels der Positronen-Emissions-Tomographie

At the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt a therapy unit for heavy ion cancer treatment has been established in collaboration with the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum Heidelberg, the Radiologische Universitätsklinik Heidelberg and the Forschungszentrum Rossendorf.

For quality assurance the dual-head positron camera BASTEI (Beta Activity meaSurements at the Therapy with Energetic Ions) has been integrated into this facility. It measures ß⁺-activity distributions generated via nuclear fragmentation reactions within the target volume.
BASTEI has about 4 million coincidence channels. The emission data are acquired in a 3D regime and stored in a list mode data format. Typically counting statstics is two to three orders of magnitude lower than those of typical PET-scans in nuclear medicine.

Two iterative 3D reconstruction algorithms based on ISRA (Image Space Reconstruction Algorithm) and MLEM (Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization), respectively, have been adapted to this imaging geometry. The major advantage of the developed approaches are run-time Monte-Carlo simulations which are used to calculate the transition matrix.
The influences of detector sensitivity variations, randoms, activity from outside of the field of view and attenuation are corrected for the individual coincidence channels.

Performance studies show, that the implementation based on MLEM is the algorithm of merit. Since 1997 it has been applied sucessfully to patient data. The localization of distal and lateral gradients of the ß⁺-activity distribution is guaranteed in the longitudinal sections. Out of the longitudinal sections the lateral gradients of the ß⁺-activity distribution should be interpreted using a priori knowledge.